SEATTLE – Bainbridge varsity rower Rosie Brown won the Northwest Ergomania Indoor Rowing Championships for the second year in a row with an overpowering performance during the competition Saturday, Feb. 6 in Magnuson Park.

Brown won first place in the high school girls open weight category with a 6:57.3 time in the 2,000-meter sprint. She beat 74 other competitors from around the region, and bested second-place Holy Names by a huge margin of 21 seconds.

Seattle Rowing Center was 5.5 seconds further back at 7:24.3 and claimed third place.

With the first-place win, Brown earned a free trip to compete for the world title at the Junior (high school) Women’s World Indoor Rowing Championship, known as the C.R.A.S.H.­-B. sprint competition, to be held in Boston, Massachusetts on Sunday, Feb. 28.

“The varsity girls are excited that Rosie achieved her goal of qualifying for the C.R.A.S.H.-B. Championships for the second year,” said Bainbridge Varsity Girls Coach Barb Trafton.

“Rosie paced herself well and is a powerful rower. She is setting high standards as she leads her team into the spring racing season here on Bainbridge,” Trafton added.

Held at Seattle’s Magnuson Park and sponsored by the George Pocock Foundation, the competition attracts hundreds of rowers from around the Northwest each year. It is one of a series of international rowing “ergometer” machine competitions that culminate in the World Indoor Rowing Championships, the C.R.A.S.H.­-B Sprints.

Bainbridge’s Director of Rowing and Varsity Boys Coach Bruce Beall was one of the founders of the event in the early 1980s, when the original Concept 2 ergs made indoor rowing affordable and ubiquitous at health clubs and gyms. At the time, Beall was coaching Lightweight Men at Harvard and training for the U.S. National Team.

The original race was a handful of college graduates. The name C.R.A.S.H.­-B. was tongue­-in-­cheek, standing for “Charles River Association of Sculling Has-Beens.”